The Subject Is Ethnicity

Abstract

Reflects on the teaching of race relations since the late 1970s in the Masters of Social Science by Advanced Study in Race Relations program at the U of Bristol (England) in the context of Peter Rose's The Subject Is Race (1968), a study of the teaching of race relations in the US. Race relations teaching in the US in the 1960s is described by Rose as parochial, ethnocentric, problem-oriented, meliorist, atheoretical, & driven by civil rights concerns. Drawing on a review of 94 dissertations completed in the U of Bristol program, it is shown here that the program is less meliorist & ethnocentric, & much more theory driven. Further, with the notion of race becoming difficult to define, students have begun to stress ethnic relations, creating a kind of subdiscipline in the sociology of race relations. It is concluded, however, that the Bristol program would do well to stress the fact that ethnic relations, like race relations, are one aspect of sociological relations & should be studied from this wider perspective. 12 References. D. M. Smith